Not About White Workers: The Perils of Popular Ethnographic Narrative in the Time of Trump

• Main Authors: Ryan Brownlow, Megan Wood
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cultural Studies Association 2017-12-01
• Series: Lateral
• Subjects: donald trump; empathy; ethnography; narrative; popular; united states; whiteness; working class
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.25158/L6.2.8

In this essay, we raise concerns about the popular success of contemporary ethnographies that focus on the rural and white “working class.” We identify three major problems that relate to those ethnographies and how they have been taken up as political explanations. First, we argue that the ethnographies, in their popular circulation, are not being treated critically—as partial accounts of a limited cultural experience—and are instead being taken for granted as straightforward political and economic analyses. Second, we argue that the ethnographies are exacerbating the effects of existing narratives about the role of feelings in the contemporary political life of our country and further, that they are amplifying what we have called the “empathy mandate”—a mandate that demands that our political actions center on trying to understand misunderstood populations (in this case, the so-called “white working class”). Third, we argue that by disarticulating the cultural markers of “working classness” from the material conditions of class, the ethnographies are part and parcel of a political conundrum that requires from us more discernment and critical thought about just what “working class” means for our politics. In response to the special issue's call "to privilege actions that are engaged with surfacing deeper historical structures of inequity or dispossession," we urge scholars, especially in times of crisis, to stop and think about the stories that undergird our political actions and strategies. The ethnographies of “white working class” experience that we have engaged in this essay may be of use in this effort, but only if we treat them as small openings that lead to bigger and broader stories—as mere beginnings—rather than as complete and transparent explanations for what is going on.